For Mary Russell & her husband Sherlock Holmes returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad is a delicious anticipation But the longed for sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a bitter memory from her husband's past Mary had met Damian Adler only once before but the talented & troubled young man is enlisting her help again this time in a desperate search for his missing wife & child From suicides among the Standing Stones to a bizarre religious cult from the heart of Bohemian London to dark secrets on the streets of Shanghai Russell will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she's ever faced
- a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near & dear to his heart
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The language of flowers is as old as language itself In the earliest poetry familiar plants were used to represent simple emotions ideas or states of mind love hope despair fidelity solitude beauty mortality Over time these associations entwined with myth & legend with religious symbolism folk & herbal lore By the early 19th century the ' Language of Flora' had become increasingly refined especially in England & America where sentimental flower books listing flower meanings & illustrating them with verse were perennial bestsellers The Everyman Language of Flowers without sacrificing the charm of its Victorian predecessors aims to provide extended updated & rather more robust floral anthology for the 21st century presenting poetry from ancient Greece to contemporary Britain & America & spanning the world from Cuba to Korea Russia to Zimbabwe Here are Rumi & Rilke on the rose; Herrick & Louise Gluck on the lily; Chaucer Emily Dickinson & Jon Silkin on the daisy; Mary Robinson & Ted Hughes on the snowdrop; Lorenzo de Medici John Clare & Alice Oswald on the violet; Hugo & Roethke on carnations; Ovid & Goethe on poppies; Blake & Eugenio Montale on the sunflower; Christina Rossetti on heartsease & forget-me-nots; Emily Bronte on harebells & heather Seamus Heaney on lupins Pasternak on night-scented stock Eastern cultures rich in flower associations are well represented there are Tang poems celebrating chrysanthemums & peonies Zen poems about orchids & lotus flowers poems about jasmine & marigolds from India roses tulips & narcissi from Persia the Ottoman empire & the Arabic world Flowers are arranged by season with roses & lilies in a section of their own In a final section poets comment directly or indirectly on the language of flowers itself The book concludes with a selected glossary drawn from several celebrated Victorian collections ...

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh is a moving story of hope & forgiveness & an international bestseller The Victorians used flowers to express emotions honeysuckle for devotion azaleas for passion & red roses for love For Victoria Jones flowers & their meanings are her only connection to the world
- although for her they are most useful in expressing feelings such as grief mistrust & solitude After a childhood in the foster care system Victoria
- now eighteen
- has nowhere to go & sleeps in a public park where she plants a small garden of her own When her talent is discovered by a local florist she discovers her gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them But it takes a meeting with a mysterious vendor at the flower market for her to realize what's been missing in her own life As she starts to fall for him though she must confront a painful secret from her past
- & decide whether it's worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness



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Dr Francis S Collins head of the Human Genome Project is one of the world's leading scientists working at the cutting edge of the study of DNA the code of life Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God How does he reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable? In THE LANGUAGE OF GOD he explains his own journey from atheism to faith & then takes the reader on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics chemistry & biology -- indeed reason itself -- are not incompatible with belief His book is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all why are we here? How did we get here? & what does life mean? ...

' As a child I just knew which plant to pick up & hold to my head for a headache to go away Once I heard about the concept of a 'doctrine of signatures' I would just stand silently in awe of nature talking to me talking & talking in her silent direct speech The book of nature seemed so obviously spelled out & in oddest contrast to what I learned in medical school My professors seemed never to have heard of nature being vibrant & alive & brimming with patterns of energy that are right there for us to understand & use This direct & primordial experience of being part of nature's omnipresent cyclic course taught me more in the realm of no-words than any university ever could have' -- Julia Graves During the Middle Ages communicating with nature was called the 'doctrine of signatures' & it was an important part of the work of traditional healers & herbalists The Language of Plants covers all aspects of the doctrine of signatures in an easily accessible format so that everyone whether nature lovers or healers can learn to read the language of plants in connection with healing ...

In The Language of Things Deyan Sudjic Director of the Design Museum decodes the things around us their hidden meanings our relationship with them how they shape our lives & why we desire them Design is everywhere It seduces pleases & inspires us It makes us part with our money It defines who we think we are An iPhone an anglepoise lamp a Picasso a banknote an Armani suit a William Morris textile a Lucky Strike packet a spacecraft
- every object tells a story And understanding their stories offers us a whole new way of seeing the world & Articulate & wonderfully knowledgeable for anyone who takes an interest in the world around us& Time Out &A nightmare vision of a world drowning in objects witty well observed & wide-ranging& Guardian & An elegant witty & free-ranging survey from Thomas Chippendale&s ponderous 18th-century manor-house furnishings to Jonathan Ive&s sprightly Macintosh i Books& Daily Telegraph & Lively engaging& Evening Standard & Readable sharp & worthwhile& Financial Times Director of the Design Museum Deyan Sudjic was born in London of Yugoslav parents He is a former architecture critic for the Observer & a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art Sudjic was Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002 & is author of The Edifice Complex the much-praised 100-Miles City the best-selling Architecture Pack The Language of Things & monographs on John Pawson Ron Arad & Richard Rogers
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From bestselling author of SIX OF CROWS Leigh Bardugo comes a lavishly illustrated collection of short stories filled with betrayals revenge sacrifice & love Inspired by myth fairy tale & folklore THE LANGUAGE OF THORNS will transport you to both lands familiar & strange that millions have visited through the novels of the Grishaverse Love speaks in flowers Truth requires thorns Travel to a world of dark bargains struck by moonlight of haunted towns & hungry woods of talking beasts & gingerbread golems where a young mermaid's voice can summon deadly storms & where a river might do a lovestruck boy's bidding but only for a terrible price Inspired by myth fairy tale & folklore no 1 New York Times-bestselling author Leigh Bardugo has crafted a deliciously atmospheric collection of short stories filled with betrayals revenge sacrifice & love Perfect for new readers & dedicated fans of the Grishverse This collection of six stories

Includes:: three br&-new tales all of them beautifully illustrated with art by Sara Kiplin that changes with each turn of the page culminating in six stunning full-spread illustrations as rich in detail as the stories themselves

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From fjords to mountains schools of herring to herds of reindeer Scandinavia is rich in astonishing natural beauty Less well known however is that it is also rich in languages Home to seven languages Scandinavia has traditionally been understood as linguistically bifurcated between its five Germanic languages (Danish Norwegian Swedish Icelandic & Faroese) & its two Finno-Ugric ones (Finnish & Sami) In The Languages of Scandinavia Ruth H Sanders takes a pioneering approach she considers these Seven Sisters of the North together While the two linguistic families that comprise Scandinavia's languages ultimately have differing origins the Seven Sisters have coexisted side by side for millennia As Sanders reveals a crisscrossing of names territories & even to some extent language genetics intimate language contact has created a body of shared culture experience & linguistic influences that is illuminated when the story of these seven languages is told as one Exploring everything from the famed whalebone Lewis Chessmen of Norse origin to the interactions between the Black Death & the Norwegian language The Languages of Scandinavia offers profound insight into languages with a cultural impact deep-rooted & far-reaching from the Icelandic sagas to Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's internationally popular Millennium trilogy Sanders's book is both an accessible work of linguistic scholarship & a fascinating intellectual history of language ...

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson author of the groundbreaking highly acclaimed Jesus' Son Written in the same luminous prose this collection finds Johnson in new territory contemplating mortality the ghosts of the past & the elusive & unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves Finished shortly before Johnson's death this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come ...

'A charming & brilliantly entertaining novel shot through with the light-hearted Nesbit touch' Penelope Lively from the introduction When did two girls of our age have such a chance as we've got
- to have a lark entirely on our own? No chaperone no rules no No present income or future prospects said Lucilla It's 1919 & Jane & her cousin Lucilla leave school to find that their guardian has gambled away their money leaving them with only a small cottage in the English countryside In an attempt to earn their living the orphaned cousins embark on a series of misadventures
- cutting flowers from their front garden & selling them to passers-by inviting paying guests who disappear without paying
- all the while endeavouring to stave off the attentions of male admirers in a bid to secure their independence' To come upon any Nesbit today hitherto unread is like receiving a letter from a friend whom you have believed dead' New York Times


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